Mike’s Rumblings – 04-28-23

This is an audio version of Mike Murphy‘s Friday rumblings. This is a regular post on Facebook that I’ve turned into a podcast. I decided Mike’s words needed a wider audience. You may agree or disagree with what he says, but there is certainly much food for thought contained here. You can friend Mike on Facebook for the printed version or read it below

Rumblings. 4.28.23 

1. The outcome of the 2024 election will hinge on our answer to  one pivotal question. Do we still want a democracy or not? 

2. “My Pillow” founder and prominent election denier Mike Lindell made a bold offer ahead of a “cyber symposium” he held in August 2021 in South Dakota: He claimed he had data showing Chinese interference and said he would pay $5 million to anyone who could prove the material was not from the previous year’s U.S. election.

He called the challenge “Prove Mike Wrong.”

On Wednesday, a private arbitration panel ruled that someone did.” ~WAPO

I have to admit that I found this to be a ‘feel good’ story. $5 million is a whole lot of pillows. Glad to see Lindell, who has deliberately and maliciously done so much damage, get called out. May it be the wake up call that leads to a change of his  attitude and heart.

3. If you never learned about the outcome of the Dominion suit against FOX News then you were probably watching FOX News. Let’s just say the breadth and depth of their coverage of their ‘problem with the truth’ was a little lacking. It’s no surprise. 

Conservative pundit George F. Will notes that the case  uncovered “an avalanche of evidence that Fox News thinks of its audience as being easily triggered, akin to campus snowflakes, into trauma. And that Fox News should be their ‘safe space’ where viewers will encounter nothing, such as news that might make them sad. The settlement prevented the network further embarrassment: Fox News could not have comfortably defended its on-air personnel as entertainers, not journalists, and innocent of defamation because they are anti-intellectual sociopaths.”

Was I sad that Tucker Carlson was pulled off the air? No, not at all. I was delighted. He’s a very vile and dangerous man, masquerading as a voice of reason, who quite obviously needs some history lessons, an ethics course, a good therapist and a spiritual director. I pray he seeks the help he needs. 

I can’t help but wonder, though, what FOX is up to now and who’s first in line to woo Carlson onto their team?

4. I’m slowly making my way through a Brennan Manning book I didn’t even know existed. It’s called A Glimpse of Jesus: The Stranger to Self Hatred. It has already touched me profoundly. Manning writes:

“Praying over the passage of the washing of the feet, I was suddenly transported in faith into the Upper Room, where I took Judas’s place among the Twelve. 

Jesus, with a towel around his waist, poured water from a pitcher into a copper basin and reached out to wash my feet. Involuntarily I pulled my foot back. I couldn’t look at him. I had betrayed the vision, been unfaithful to my dream (and thus unfaithful to his plan for my life). 

Sensing my dismay, he placed his hand on my knee and said, “Brennan, do you know what these years together have meant to me? You were being held even when you didn’t believe I was holding you. I love you, my friend.” Tears rolled down my cheeks. “But Lord, my sins, my repeated failures, my weaknesses…” “I understand. Brennan, I expected more failure from you than you expected from yourself.” He smiled. “And you always came back. Nothing pleases me as much as when you trust me, when you allow that my compassion is bigger than your sinfulness.” 

“But Jesus, what about my irritating character defects—the boasting, the inflating of the truth, the pretense of being an intellectual, the impatience with people, and all the times I drank to excess?” 

Jesus replied: “What you are saying is true. But your love for me has never wavered: your heart has remained pure. What’s more, even in the darkness and confusion, you’ve always done something that overshadowed all the rest. You were kind to sinners…Peace, my friend.” 

“My compassion is bigger than your sinfulness…. Nothing pleases me as much as when you trust me…”  

5. Men never do evil so completely and cheerfully as when they do it from religious convictions.” ~ Blaise Paschal

The ‘christian nationalism’ movement in America asks its loyalists to joyfully believe in and do scandalous things all in the name of a god they’ve invented, which is actually a rather unflattering caricature of Jesus. In days past we’d call it idolatry.

6. “Jesus wept,  

    and in his weeping, 

    he joined himself forever 

    to those who mourn.

      

 He stands now throughout all time,  

  this Jesus weeping, 

  with his arms about the weeping ones …

       

In the godforsaken, obscene quicksand of life,  

there is a deafening alleluia 

rising from the souls  

of those who weep, 

and of those who weep with those 

If you watch, you see the hand of God  

putting the stars back in their skies 

one by one.”  ~ Ann Weems

7. When Jesus is replaced by the Bible (and believe me, in certain quarters that is indeed the case) Christianity easily becomes legalistic and any thought of grace is only given lip service. 

 8. “The creation of the world did not take place once and for all time, but takes place every day.” ~ Samuel Beckett

Here’s the good news. We get to be a part of this daily creation of our world. We’re creation makers. Put that on your resume.

So, even In the midst of all the evil and wickedness in our world, there  are still opportunities for us to be a light in the darkness and to link arms with others doing the same. Shine brightly, my friends, shine brightly.

9. “There will always be rocks in the road ahead of us. They will be stumbling blocks or stepping stones; it all depends on how you use them.” ~ Fredrick Nietzsche.

It boils down to what we do with the gift of choice. It almost always comes to that, doesn’t it?

10. There have been more  incidents of mass shootings in 2023 than there are days. 

Paranoia runs deep these days. Gun lobbies work overtime to scare people, reminding them that if you’re not armed, you won’t be able to stand your ground against ‘them’ who will be at your doorstep any day now. 

It’s a sad day in America when someone is shot and/or killed because  they lost their way, their basketball got away from them, made a u-turn,  accidentally tried to open the door of a car identical to their own, or showed up at the wrong address to pick up siblings. 

Gun ownership, as I grew up understanding it, is a grave and sober responsibility. I think, somewhere along the way, we’ve discarded that particular perspective. Too many are quite OK with allowing those who are neither sober nor responsible to arm themselves with weapons no citizen really needs. 

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